Bard Conservatory of Music Announces Seventh Annual Kurtág Festival Honoring György Kurtág’s 100th Birthday, March 11–April 4

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON/BROOKLYN, NY—The Bard Conservatory of Music presents the seventh season of the Kurtág Festival, Signs, Games & Messages, honoring Hungarian composer György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. The 2026 edition highlights the clarity, precision, and expressive depth of Kurtág’s music, and places his work in dialogue with composers and traditions important to him, including both predecessors and contemporaries.

“Our 2026 Kurtág Festival is the heart of the centenary celebrations in North America, bringing a program that reflects the depth of Kurtág’s musical legacy,” says Artistic Director Benjamin Hochman. “We are pleased to welcome Benjamin Appl, András Kemenes, and András Szalai—artists who have worked closely with Kurtág—and to showcase the central role Bard Conservatory faculty and students play in this festival.”

The festival presents solo, vocal, and chamber works by Kurtág alongside music by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Bartók, Benjamin, Abrahamsen, Adès, and others, including U.S. premieres of selections from the later volumes of Játékok. The programming brings together Bard faculty, students, and artists closely connected to Kurtág, reflecting the collaborative spirit that defines the festival.
Most of the festival events (March 11, 27, 28, 29) take place at Bard College’s Annandale campus, with one event (April 4) at the Brooklyn Public Library. All on-campus performances are free and open to the public.

Artists performing in the festival include Benjamin Appl (baritone); Demian Austin (trombone); James Baillieu (piano); Sydney Cornett (mezzo-soprano); Luosha Fang (violin); Lucy Fitz Gibbons (soprano); Benjamin Hochman (piano); András Kemenes (piano); Alexandra Knoll (oboe); Ryan McCullough (piano); Marcus Rojas (tuba); Erika Switzer (piano); András Szalai (cimbalom); and additional faculty and students of the Bard College Conservatory of Music.

About György Kurtág and the Kurtág Festival
Bard Conservatory of Music’s annual Kurtág Festival celebrates the last surviving member of the great generation of composers who gave classical music a new direction in the years following World War II. György Kurtág, a seminal figure of the post–World War II musical avant-garde, is celebrated for his intensely expressive music and influential teaching. Born in Romania in 1926, he moved to Hungary to study and later teach at the Franz Liszt Academy. Now recognized as one of the foremost composers of our time, he premiered his first opera, Fin de partie, at La Scala in 2018. After years in Western Europe, he returned to Hungary in 2015, where he continues to compose. He turns 100 in February 2026.

About the Bard College Conservatory
Founded in 2005, the Bard College Conservatory of Music offers a unique five-year, double-degree program at the undergraduate level, integrating rigorous musical training with a liberal arts education. Graduate programs include vocal arts, conducting, instrumental performance, and Chinese music and culture, along with Advanced Performance Studies and a Collaborative Piano Fellowship. The Conservatory’s US-China Music Institute, formed in 2017, offers the only degree programs in Chinese instrument performance in the Western Hemisphere. The Bard Conservatory Orchestra has performed at Lincoln Center, toured internationally to China, Russia, Eastern Europe, and Cuba, and in collaboration with the Bard Prison Initiative presents annual performances at NY-area prisons. The Conservatory enrolls more than 200 students from 27 countries and 35 states. bard.edu/conservatory

Funding Credit
This festival has been permanently endowed through the generous support of László Z. Bitó '60 and Olivia Cariño.

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year, residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,200 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in more than 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 13 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 165-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.
 

​​Festival Programs

Program One, Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 7pm
Olin Hall, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Kurtág and the Lieder Tradition
Baritone Benjamin Appl joins pianists Erika Switzer, James Baillieu, and Benjamin Hochman for a program that places Kurtág’s vocal writing in conversation with the 19th-century Lieder tradition. Music by Schubert and Schumann appears alongside Kurtág’s Four Schuster Songs and Hölderlin-Gesänge, Op. 35a. Demian Austin (trombone) and Marcus Rojas (tuba) contribute to the Hölderlin-Gesänge, and Hochman performs solo selections from Játékok.
 
Program Two, Friday, March 27, 2026, 7pm
Conservatory Performance Space, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Abrahamsen’s Schnee
The festival weekend’s opening night program features Hans Abrahamsen’s masterpiece Schnee, a one-hour cycle of ten canons for nine instruments, inspired by Bach’s canonic writing. The work is performed by an ensemble of Conservatory faculty, students, and guest artists, conducted by Benjamin Hochman. The program also includes George Benjamin’s arrangement of a Canon & Fugue from Bach’s Art of Fugue, as well as solo piano selections from Kurtág’s Játékok.
 
Program Three, Saturday, March 28, 2026, 1pm
Conservatory Performance Space, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Bach Inventions and Sinfonias
Students from across the Bard Conservatory perform Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias in a 50-minute recital. The program highlights Bach’s central place in Kurtág’s music and the composers’ shared interest in pedagogical composition.

Program Four, Saturday, March 28, 2026, 7pm
Chapel of the Holy Innocents, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Songs, Laments, Dances, Games
This program puts a special spotlight on the cimbalom, with Hungarian Fulbright Scholar András Szalai performing alongside Bard Conservatory students and faculty. The concert features musical works within the Hungarian tradition, including Bartok, Kurtág, Ligeti, and Thomas Adès’s Növények for mezzo-soprano and piano sextet.

Program Five, Sunday, March 29, 2026, 3pm
Conservatory Performance Space, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Kurtág, Mozart, and the Bach Family
Hungarian pianist András Kemenes makes his U.S. debut with solo works by C. P. E. Bach and later performs two-piano works from Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions and Mozart’s Six German Dances, K. 509, with pianist Benjamin Hochman. Conservatory woodwind students and faculty perform Kurtág’s Wind Quintet, Op. 2, and Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, K. 452.
 
Program Six, Saturday, April 4, 2026, 4 pm
Brooklyn Public Library, NYC
The Brooklyn Public Library presents a special event in collaboration with the Bard Conservatory’s Kurtág Festival. The concert program will include highlights from the Bard Kurtág Festival alongside a panel discussion on Kurtág’s life and work led by scholar Gergely Fazekas, Associate Professor at the Liszt Academy.
 

This event was last updated on 12-11-2025

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